GALLERY: Female Celebs Whose Weaves Could Clean Up The Oil Spill

Used as either the butt of a joke or the subject of Chris Rock’s “Good Hair” documentary, hair weave hasn’t been taken seriously for years. However today, that changes as government officials are requesting just that to help in the containment efforts of the BP oil spill.

Hair is hydrophobic — is this why women don’t like to get their hair wet? — so it absorbs petroleum while water slides off. The technique was apparently discovered by an Alabama hair stylist named Phil McCrory, who found that the hundreds of thousands of pounds of weave are disposed of daily.